


the long game

by themorninglark



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Falling In Love, First Kiss, First Love, Fluff, Inspired by Fanfiction, M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-20 00:56:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3630675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Suga learns all the relevant plays, and Daichi loses. Or wins, depending on who you ask.</p><p>(A remix of "winner in the whirlwind", by tothemoon)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the long game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tothemoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothemoon/gifts).
  * Inspired by [winner in the whirlwind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3553424) by [tothemoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothemoon/pseuds/tothemoon). 



> This is a remix of the lovely [winner in the whirlwind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3553424). It follows the exact same events, except from Suga's POV. I think it can be read in isolation, but it was written to be a companion fic, so do read the original if you haven't. It's fantastic.

**x**

 

The truth is, Suga knows Daichi by heart.

He hasn’t always, though.

 

**x**

 

The first time the two of them face off against each other, Koushi is in his _phase_ , the one where he pouts at people and protests at them to call him _Koushi_ , but all the kids at school remember for only, approximately, three minutes and fifty seconds (a tremendous effort, to be sure) before they slip back into _Suga_ , because _Sugawara_ is too much of a mouthful for five-year-olds.

On that day, Koushi etches out a three-by-three grid in the sandpit. As he draws the last line, he raises his finger to a corner, prepared to play another game of tic-tac-toe by himself (it’s fine; he always wins). He forms a circle.

It is then that another small hand appears in his line of sight, and carves out an _X_ in dead centre. “That’s the best space,” says an unfamiliar voice.

Koushi looks up into dark brown eyes, narrowed at him in a challenge. The other boy has torn demin overalls and a race-car bandaid on his cheek. Koushi thinks he looks like trouble. He’s obviously seen his fair share of rough and tumble. Koushi, himself, is wearing a floppy straw hat with a wide brim and too much funny-smelling sunblock, thanks to his mother’s exhortations and his _pale white delicate skin_.

Trouble has a tan and messy black hair. He smiles, fist clenched, waiting for Koushi to make his next move.

Koushi grins back cheekily, and thinks, _oh, you’re on_.

In the end, he doesn’t even learn Sawamura Daichi’s name, and he’s so engrossed in his victory that he forgets to say, _call me Koushi_.

 

**x**

 

“So, Sawamura - ”

“Daichi.”

Suga laughs, feeling lighter than air, and poises himself on his tiptoes to take off flying.

“Okay, _Daichi_.”

Sawamura Daichi is barely taller than Suga, but he is bigger and bulkier and just has a kind of _presence_ that Suga, in all frankness, knows he does not. His voice is deep. His shoulders fill his shirt solidly. There’s something about their dependable, square, _blocky_ shape that makes Suga want to punch them, like a fistbump.

Suga rocks up and down on his heels, and looks expectantly at Daichi. “Race you back?”

“You bet,” says Daichi with a nod. “Are your shoes tied?”

With an innocent smile and a not-so-innocent eyelid flutter, Suga thinks, _oh, Sawamura Daichi, I could beat you with my shoes untied_.

He has a feeling that won’t be so for long, though. Daichi is solid, like the earth, and like the earth, he is slow and steady, but he is also constant - constant, and the most hardworking person on the team, perhaps simply the most doggedly determined person that Suga has ever met. He knows speed is not his forte, so he makes himself invaluable in other ways. He is always there when you need him. He is always there even when you don’t.

Suga fancies himself pretty handy with a pinpoint serve. They’ve only played together for a while, but sometimes, Suga likes serving straight into Daichi’s arms just to see the way he always connects, without fail.

Sometimes, he likes sending the ball right to the other end of the court to watch Daichi rise up, to watch the earth move before his eyes.

Daichi loses their race today. But Suga knows that if there had been a ball to receive at the end of it, Daichi would’ve been there way before him.

There’s no ball, though, so he wins, and with a grin and a cheeky nudge in his new friend’s ribs, Suga makes Daichi buy him a lemon-flavoured popsicle on their way home as penance.

 

**x**

 

_Always the laces._

Suga keeps his head bowed, and undoes his laces very, very slowly, thinking about how, the first time Daichi held his hand, he’d just finished re-tying them.

Now they are frayed and coming undone, thread by thread, just like him.

Suga feels like the wind, scattered to the four corners of the earth.

“We’ve got _Harukou_ prelims coming up in August. Let’s work hard.”

 _Ah_ , thinks Suga with a soft sigh.

_Daichi._

When he thinks Daichi’s name, the butterflies in his head seem to slow and settle quietly on the syllables, the solid, rounded sound of the _d_ and the _ch_.

Suga looks up. Asahi is standing by his locker, fidgeting with the strap of his bag, looking like he might shatter, and Suga watches with red-rimmed eyes as Daichi prods him with a deflated volleyball and gives him a pep talk that’s got almost no pep _or_ talk in it.

“We still have to keep trying. Yeah?”

What it does have is something that pulls them both to the ground. Both Asahi, facing Daichi, and Suga, sitting at the bench behind them, gazing at Daichi’s back. He wears the black Karasuno jacket with pride. Flightless crows, they call them, but Suga thinks maybe what they need right now is just that - to stay anchored - to stay together, and solid, so that when they fly again, they do so with a power stronger than before.

Later, as they eat their meat buns while walking home, Suga tells Daichi that he hopes he meant what he said before, and Daichi frowns. “Of course I did.”

“Good,” says Suga, with a smile.

“Why would you worry about that?” asks Daichi.

Suga opens his mouth, and what comes out of it is: “Not worried. More like… I’d like our glue to stay sticky.”

And of course Daichi says he doesn’t follow, because, thinks Suga, when _you’re_ the glue, you don’t see it yourself, Daichi; you stick by my side and cock your head in puzzlement and say _I don’t follow_ when I say weird things like that, and you trust me to make some sense even when I’m all muddled up inside like this.

And that’s the thing about Daichi, always. He believes in Suga and Asahi with all his heart. He believes in them even when Asahi flips out over something small and Suga overthinks his tosses, all his tosses. Suga has barely even seen any time on the courts in an actual competition. Suga just sits by the sidelines, and watches, and thinks.

And yet, as Suga tries not to laugh through his awkward explanations about being scared, and Daichi holding them together, Daichi breaks out into a wide, radiant smile, the first real smile that Suga has seen on his lips all day, and says -

“I’m glad you’re on my team, Suga.”

 _Oh,_ thinks Suga.

He’s caught off-guard for the slightest of breaths. He turns the little hitch into a chuckle.

“ _Your_ team?” he asks, with a breezy, carefree laugh. “I didn’t know they made first years _captains_.”

Even as he says this, though, even as he whips his hand back a second too late and Daichi hits it and sends his meat bun flying over the road railing, Suga knows in his heart that Daichi is his captain already, and because he just can’t bear losing like this, he issues an ice cream brain freeze challenge on their way back to the store.

He wins handily, of course.

 

**x**

 

_It’s my fault._

Suga has just played his first full match as a setter, taking the place of an injured second-year, and they have lost.

_It’s my fault._

Sugawara Koushi is the five-year-old in the playground all over again, the one who plays tic-tac-toe by himself because then he can win and he can also think about all the ways he lost and can get better next time; he is Koushi, the child who so earnestly wants a name of his own, not one that’s just a lazy, shortened form of his surname. Over the years, Koushi learned that the people who called him _Suga_ did so out of affection, because they loved him, and over the years, Koushi learned to embrace this.

He learned to embrace that for all his little insecurities, he was worthy of being loved.

But today, when he hears Daichi’s voice telling him it’s time to get on the bus, and he hears that little tremor in the way he says his name, _Suga_ , he stares blankly down at his bag and feels the hot tears run down his cheeks.

“Just a minute,” he says, dully.

“Suga, Kurokawa-senpai is calling us from the lot - ”

“ _Just a minute!_ ”

 _Just go, leave me behind,_ is kind of what Suga wants to say right now.

But Daichi - always Daichi - the Daichi of _even when you don’t need him, he’s there_ \- Sawamura Daichi won’t let him. Daichi lets out a sigh like a huff, crouches down, zips up Suga’s bag for him and yanks Suga to his feet gently.

Suga lets Daichi herd him onto the bus and bundle him into a window seat. The bus is hot and uncomfortable. The air-conditioning hums wildly, seeming to fluctuate between full-blast and “is this bloody thing working?” at five-minute intervals.

As everyone sleeps around him, Suga stares out of the window and replays snatches of the match in his head.

There was that one toss that was too high. Suga had known the minute it left his hands. His fingers had _snapped_ forward with too much force.

There was that one toss that was too low, too close to the net for Asahi.

And Suga can’t help letting out a low click of his tongue in frustration as his fingers curl on his lap, and he keeps his gaze fixed out of the window on the rolling countryside.

_It’s my fault._

_I’m the reason we lost -_

“No.”

Suga stirs at the sound of that voice.

He’d forgotten Daichi is right next to him. He turns, and blinks, through blurry eyes; everything around him seems to drift aimlessly like debris in the wake of a disaster, but Daichi is still there, unmoving.

“If you’re over-thinking - ”

_How did you know?_

“ - and I _bet_ you’re _over-thinking_ , stop it.”

That’s just like Daichi. Straight to the point.

There’s nothing Suga can say, because it’s true, and he can’t lie. Daichi will know. It’s one of the things that has given Suga a reputation for being the only one who can smack down Daichi when he gets all scary _intense_ , because Daichi knows that when Suga chides him, he means it; when he chides him with a smile, he _really_ means it.

Suga, dust blowing in the spring breeze, gathers himself a little, pulls himself back to Daichi, a little.

“I want to keep playing, you know. I just… want to keep _playing_ ,” he blurts out, feeling every bit the petulant kindergartener in the playground again.

“We all do,” says Daichi.

“I want to win.”

“Me too.”

And Suga has to look away, back towards the window, because somewhere in the grief that’s breaking his heart, somewhere in the self-loathing of _letting down everyone_ , there is a fiery warmth that blazes much too hot. But he seizes the feeling in his chest with clenched hands, and he lets out a breath on the windowpane.

And later, when everyone else has left, Daichi asks Suga to run with him.

Suga says yes.

They race round the track, Daichi leading by a step and a half, and with each footstep that pounds on the ground, Suga feels his toes curl, feels himself spring off and break free, just a little more. He runs faster and faster. He soars forward like a zephyr.

The only way to go is up.

The only way to go is forward.

As long as they move, as long as they keep moving, they’ll go _somewhere_ , and Suga feels safer if he’s with Daichi, because he knows Daichi won’t let him spiral off into careening flight; Daichi will be there to catch his wayward whirlwind.

And when they flop down onto the grass because they can’t run any more, Suga’s laugh is warm and genuine.

He looks at Daichi and whispers a _thank you_ that’s wholly inadequate, yet everything he has to offer, right now. “Thank you, Daichi,” he says, breathily, in between quiet laughter and gasps. His voice is pitched a little higher than usual. His heart is still racing. His pulse pounds in his veins, and he presses himself closer to the grass, getting a good lungful of its comforting, earthy scent.

Daichi looks back at him with that small, contented grin, widening slowly, as a smile spreads across Suga’s face to match.

 

**x**

 

Daichi is really spacing out today. He isn’t even listening to Suga’s story about his uncle, the professional gamer, and usually that story gets people right from the start, because come on, an _uncle_ who’s a _professional gamer_?

But not only is Daichi not listening, Daichi’s not even really trying to win Mario Kart. To the strains of the _main menu_ music, Suga throws down his pink controller and turns around to stare at the boy he’s come to think of as his _best friend_.

Sometimes - well, all the time - in his moments of overthinking (which is, yeah, all the time), Suga wonders how these things work. It’s not like he and Daichi sat down over tea one day and signed a compact that they are _best friends_ officially. It’s not like they talk about it. The thought of asking Daichi “hey, I think you’re my best friend. wanna be mine?” makes Suga’s insides turn inside out, whether from the hilarity or sheer embarrassment - or maybe both - he isn’t quite sure.

“Dai… _chi_!” he calls, raising a playful eyebrow at his distracted friend.

He puts a little extra tailspin into the way he says Daichi’s name, like a Mario Kart taking a flying leap off the road before it hits the ground again, wheels sparking. He grins as Daichi blinks, and turns to stare back at him.

Suga thinks that maybe Daichi is distracted from not laying his hands on a volleyball all day, and suggests they do something else, because surely losing twelve times in a row to him has destroyed Daichi to the point when he isn’t even listening to one of Suga’s best stories, how dare he?

Daichi turns red, and Suga laughs at the sight. Daichi is so easy to tease. It’s one of his favourite things about him.

“C’mon. Toss to me?” asks Suga, getting to his feet.

Daichi opens his mouth, then closes it, and nods.

Suga holds out his hand with a smile.

Daichi takes it, and stands up.

His palm is warm, his grip firm, with not a hint of sweat on it from fevered clutching at his game controller, and Suga files away this thought in his head: Daichi would never do anything so _plebeian_ as sweat so much he can’t hold on to something steadily.

His Daichi dossier is growing. It’s taking time, more time than it takes Suga to get the sense of a volleyball game, but unlike a volleyball game, there _is_ a time limit on Sawamura Daichi.

The time limit is the end of their third year in high school. They are already past their first.

But Sugawara Koushi knows about waiting. He knows about watching from the benches. And he knows, with a secret smile to himself as he chatters on easily about a weird dream he had the other day (Asahi was a donkey; _don’t ask_ ), that he’s getting closer and closer to understanding.

 

**x**

 

Suga looks at the **94** on his English quiz, and clicks his tongue under his breath because he’d made a silly mistake on the tenses in one question, and that could very easily have been a **96**. Still, he’s satisfied. He is the top scorer in their class.

Daichi is not, and has never been, the top scorer in any class in English, though he’s pretty good at Chemistry, which is Suga’s worst subject.

Suga tries to be encouraging. “It’s not a _bad_ score,” he says. He’s swivelled round in his chair, elbow and forearm resting casually on Daichi’s desk as he looks over the paper with the **76** scrawled on top. “I just think you need to work on your tenses. And then I think you’ll be set.”

“Tenses?” Daichi asks, frowning. He leans forward. “I thought it was a matter of spelling.”

Suga tries to disguise his bubbling laughter as a cough, gives up, and settles for a wry smile. “Um, okay… maybe that, too.”

Daichi groans, and leans forward with a tiny _clunk_ as his forehead hits his desk.

Suga tactfully puts Daichi’s English quiz back on the table, face down. He studies the top of the head in front of him, the neat, close-cropped black hair with a few strands sticking out just at the nape of his neck, the broad shoulders heaving slightly as he lets out an exasperated breath.

And Suga has to turn his gaze towards the window, because he knows Daichi doesn’t show this side of himself to anyone else, and it makes Suga’s chest feel full to bursting.

The summer heat beats down on the lawn outside. Another year, another interhigh. Another loss.

Suga says this with a sigh, when Daichi looks up at him.

“Yeah,” says Daichi. He smiles anyway, fond and rueful.

Suga takes a moment to weigh his next words. But not too long. It’s not like it’s difficult to say, after all; Suga has known the truth of it since the middle of their first year. “They told us second years to elect a new captain by the end of spring.”

Suga watches a theatre of emotions play itself out on Daichi’s face. He starts to grimace, then frown, then tries to smile as he looks at Suga, and then it’s just a mess and Suga has to chuckle at Daichi’s complete inability to mask his feelings (with regard to this subject, at least).

“Why haven’t we chosen yet?” Suga presses.

“I don’t know. Busy?” says Daichi.

Suga adds a mental post-it note to his Daichi dossier. _Daichi is an obtuse idiot._ The post-it note is a cheery yellow.

“I think it’s because we’ve already chosen without saying anything,” says Suga, giving Daichi a straight on, direct stare that even _he_ can’t pretend to miss.

Daichi turns red (of course) and blusters about how captains can’t score _seventy sixes_ on their English quizzes, and how Asahi is their ace, their big star, and Suga is going to be the official setter.

Suga smiles, and shakes his head. _Oh, Daichi,_ he thinks, looking fondly down at his captain-to-be.

Here, sitting across each other at Daichi’s desk, alone in their classroom, Suga knows exactly what play to make. He knows how to set this toss.

“Nah. There’s something about you,” he says to Daichi.

He leans across the desk, scoots closer on his forearms and sets his head down on them, staring right into the deep dark brown of Daichi’s eyes.

He feels Daichi’s warmth on his skin. His breath quickens. He wonders if Daichi notices. Probably not, thinks Suga, because, as previously noted, _Daichi is an obtuse idiot_.

Later, when Daichi holds out his hand to shake, and Suga takes it easily, tugging Daichi forward to flick him on the forehead, he does it without thinking. He acts on his instinct for the game, knowing, somehow that this is okay. That it’s okay for them to remain like this for a moment, with hands still held on the desk.

Well, maybe it’s not exactly a _game_ , thinks Suga later over the steamed milk bread (thanks, Daichi), but it’s just easier for his heart to take if he thinks of it like that.

 

**x**

 

Suga decides that there is something oddly comforting about the darkness of the equipment room.

Or maybe it’s the smell. The familiar scent of something that’s not quite _musty_ and not quite _sweaty_ and definitely not _dusty_ , because heaven forbid any dust find its way onto their stuff, Daichi would chew out the juniors - but just, that scent of _volleyball_ , perhaps.

Suga has spent a lot of time in the equipment room since yesterday. He has re-organised all the ball storage, swept in the corners again (Tanaka, bless his heart, always misses a spot right behind the shelf on the right wall), and now he’s moved on to untangling volleyball nets.

He has not touched the broken broom. He has not really moved away from it either. It lies by his legs, and Suga stands vigil over it, afraid that someone will come and throw it away.

“He’ll be back soon.”

Suga flinches at the sudden sound, and turns to meet Daichi’s steady gaze.

He wants to ask Daichi how he does it, but he knows he won’t get an answer. Daichi doesn’t think about it, he doesn’t think about _everything_ the way Suga does. Daichi just does it. He is a rock in a storm. And when he says that Asahi will be back soon, some part of Suga really does believe it.

Suga lets go of the nets. They drop down on the floor, by the broken broom.

“I know,” he says. He makes himself smile at Daichi. He is surprised that the act of forcing his lips to move upwards actually does make him feel a little better.

“Ready to go home?” Daichi asks.

“Yeah,” says Suga. “Things will be better tomorrow.”

As he walks over to the door, to Daichi, he reaches up and pats him on the shoulder. He lets his hand linger there for a few seconds more than necessary, even working in the lightest of squeezes, though Daichi probably barely feels it under all that hard muscle.

In the giving of comfort, Suga is comforted, more than Daichi can possibly imagine.

 

**x**

 

Suga wins the coin toss against Daichi for today’s practice match, with a grin and a wink.

“Hinata, nice serve!” he calls out encouragingly, only for Hinata to throw the ball into the air, take a mighty swing, and miss spectacularly.

 _Oh dear,_ thinks Suga, and braces himself for the inevitable yelling from Kageyama, as he watches Hinata’s face fall like a Sunday morning cartoon character. He steals a glance over at the other side of the net, and meets Daichi’s eyes with a sigh and a shrug.

 _‘These first years are hard to manage, huh?’_ Daichi seems to be saying.

Suga laughs. _Yeah, they are… but it’s kind of fun._

Tsukishima serves the ball on Daichi’s side, and Tanaka receives it, sending it over towards Suga, who leaps forward and rises from his tiptoes. Hinata is coming up on court left. He’s swerving towards the centre of the net. He’s going to end up too close, the way he’s moving.

Suga sets his toss high and close, and Hinata slams it down, but it’s blocked by - who else? - Daichi.

“Ahhhhh!” Hinata moans, clawing at his own face like he might tear it off in frustration. “I’m sorry, Sugawara-san! I’ll definitely hit it properly next time!”

Suga claps him on the shoulder. “What are you talking about? You hit it.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t _score_!”

“Next time,” says Suga. “Next time, you’ll definitely score.”

And he thinks, a second too late, as he catches Daichi’s tiny nod and smile through crossed twine, he should have said _we’ll_ definitely score.

He’s still trying to get his head round it, if he’s to be entirely honest with himself. The idea that he is part of the team, he is a _needed_ part of the team. Because, less than a year after Daichi had so confidently prophesied that he would be the team’s regular setter come third year, Kageyama Tobio had burst onto the scene, black feathers flying like a true crow of Karasuno, and -

And Suga had felt relieved.

Just a little bit.

_Kageyama is better than me. He’s more talented than me. Kageyama can take care of things. I won’t have to worry about letting people down._

All of it is true, and all of it is Suga’s shame.

He watches Daichi make a solid receive from his side of the court, hears someone call out “Nice receive, Daichi-san!”, and thinks - well, heck, Kageyama’s a genius, but Suga’s had two years of playing with their captain and their ace (their ace, who’ll come back, _for sure_ ), and by now the Daichi dossier is annotated with all kinds of footnotes, scribbles in the margins on pages where there is no more space.

Suga’s not as good as Kageyama. He can’t do what Kageyama does. But Kageyama can’t do what _he_ does either.

The ball gets tossed back to Daichi. Suga springs up at the edge of the net, catches the wind to block Daichi’s quick, and smiles knowingly down on him.

Suga reads all of Daichi’s moves, the way only someone who watches him constantly can.

He high fives Tanaka and shoots Daichi another dazzling smile across the net.

Daichi smiles back, an eyebrow raised.

 _'I won’t lose’_ , he seems to be saying, in the same breath as something else, something they’ve both known for a long time now.

 

**x**

 

They are tossing to each other after school one day, behind the gym, and Daichi misses Suga’s last toss, even though Suga knows he’d set it well.

The ball falls to the ground between their feet, rolling to a slow stop.

“ _Daaai-chi!_ ” Suga complains. “You missed that on purpose!”

Daichi smiles. “Yeah. Sorry. I was thinking about something else.”

He looks up, straight into Suga’s eyes, and Suga feels something in him twist free and fly into the pale pink sky. Maybe more _lavender_. Pastel, anyway. Suga is babbling in his mind. He clamps his mouth shut firmly to make sure none of this weird stuff comes out of it. He has a funny feeling about this. He has a funny feeling about Daichi right now.

“Well the truth is, I like you, Suga.”

And the first thing Suga thinks is: he says this like he’s just asking me out for a meat bun, like always.

And in a way, perhaps, he is. They are standing outside, the air is warm and balmy, and as Suga lifts his toes and drops them in nervous excitement, he feels the ground _extra solid_ beneath his feet. The weather forecast for today had been rain. It had not rained. The earth is dry and unyielding.

But all around them, the smell of grass and flowers, in the cheesiest possible setting for a confession at the back of the school gym, with a dropped volleyball between them.

Daichi keeps his gaze on Suga, the tiniest smile on his lips, his eyes brimming, but steady.

His name had spelled it out for Suga all along, in Kanji. _Earth._

“I like you too, Daichi. I like you a lot.”

And as the sky bursts open into an orange sunset that sets the ground aglow, Daichi blinks, and his smile widens.

 

**x**

 

Later, because Suga doesn’t know when to let well enough alone, he teases Daichi about having had a crush on him for _years_.

Daichi replies without missing a beat that _'like'_ isn’t the word for it. It’s more like, he says, more like…

And then he peters off, blushing redder than Suga has ever seen him before, and Suga has to giggle in a thoroughly unbecoming way and squeeze Daichi’s hand tighter, because he’ll be damned if this isn’t the cutest thing he’s ever seen.

“I’ll be the first to say it when the time comes,” says Suga confidently, stepping closer to Daichi. His lips could graze his cheek, if he leaned in just a little.

He doesn’t, not yet.

He’s been waiting for Sawamura Daichi for a long time now. He can savour it a little longer, let this unfold, slowly.

“Is that a challenge?” says Daichi, with a grin.

“Maybe it is.”

Daichi tells him he can’t win them all.

Suga says he already has, running his thumb across Daichi’s knuckles, and he laughs, lighter than air, just like the first time they held hands.

 

**x**

 

One week later, Asahi comes back to regular practice and Suga is on top of the world.

After practice, when Daichi is still out on the courts going through schedules and paperwork with Takeda-sensei, Asahi _bodily_ drags Suga over to the good old comforting equipment room and whispers very conspicuously, “Daichi told me.”

Suga blinks up at him in all innocence. “Told you what?”

“ _Suga!_ ” Asahi protests, a plaintive, wheedling note in his voice.

Suga gives him his most angelic grin, and doesn’t say anything further. He starts rearranging the volleyball storage carts, because Nishinoya has this habit of chucking them all in higgledy-piggledy. Obviously, the kid has never played Tetris; there’s a _knack_ to slotting them in just right.

Asahi scratches his head and sighs, but he can’t keep the warm smile off his face. “Well, I just wanted to say, _congrats_.”

Suga shoots him a smile back over his shoulder. “It’s not like things are all that different, Asahi. You know that, right?”

“E-eh?”

“I mean,” says Suga, “between the three of us.”

Asahi lets out a long breath. “I know.”

Then he grins. “You were always going to be the one for Daichi, anyway.”

“You think so?” Suga tosses a ball at Asahi, who spikes it back at him with ease. Suga’s hands smart when he catches it out of the air. Asahi doesn’t know his own strength sometimes.

Asahi nods. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s not that simple. I kinda feel like I’ve won something, sometimes, when I look at Daichi,” says Suga with a laugh, as he puts the ball back and walks out of the equipment room with Asahi. “Like I’ve been playing this game of _will he or won’t he?_ \- and I finally won.”

“Nah,” says Asahi, giving Suga a pat on the back that’s more like a hearty whack, and Suga coughs and doubles over. “You _both_ won.”

 

**x**

 

Daichi is locking up the door. Suga is on the doorsteps, waiting for him.

The sun is setting behind them in hues of gold. It’s just like the day they confessed. Suga can’t quite believe it’s only been a week. It feels like forever.

He looks up at Daichi’s broad shoulders and strong forearms, the way he plants his feet on the ground. _Daichi_ , in all his quiet, constant strength. _Daichi_ , like coming home to rest.

Suga takes a step forward, and reaches for Daichi’s hand.

Daichi pauses in his turn. He leans back against the door, and smiles down at Suga with an unmistakable spark in his eyes.

 _Oh,_ thinks Suga, and he grins on the inside, bubbling like pink champagne. _Oh no, you don’t, you’re not winning this one._

Daichi starts to bend down, lean closer. His eyes are half-lidded, and his lips are almost to Suga’s before Suga steps back, laughing, with a smirk that he knows will drive Daichi _absolutely_ mad. “Race me to the end of the road, and then you can kiss me,” he calls, sprinting off to a head start.

He looks over his shoulder, and his heart soars as he sees Daichi pounding the road behind him, eyes narrowed in the way Suga has come to know so well.

 _I’m not losing this time_ , they say.

_Then come, come catch me, if you can._

Suga flies into the wind, and then -

Of all things, it’d have to be the laces, wouldn’t it?

He trips over an untied shoelace (how poetically _just_ , he has barely enough time to think to himself), lands on the grass, and watches helplessly as Daichi crosses the finish line first.

Daichi flops down next to Suga, catching his breath. His eyes flicker over.

Suga smiles.

Daichi raises himself on an elbow. He starts to lean closer.

_Oh no, you don’t._

Suga makes his play, and swoops in first.

His hands reach for Daichi’s shoulders, and he pushes him back down onto the grass, pressing his lips softly to Daichi’s rough, chapped ones. They taste of his sports drink. Lying on top of him like this, cheek to cheek, nose to nose, Daichi smells of - well, to be honest, of _sweat_ , which is pretty much to be expected since they’ve just finished volleyball practice and a sprint to the end of the road, but it’s certainly not the magical movie moment that a first kiss is purported to be.

It’s better, thinks Suga, so much better because it’s real.

The hand reaching up to cup the back of his neck is real. Daichi is real.

“Looks like I win again,” says Suga, lifting his lips for a moment to rub it in Daichi’s face.

Daichi sighs, rolls his eyes, and pulls Suga down for another kiss.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, thank you so much Justine ([tothemoon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tothemoon/pseuds/tothemoon)), for letting me write the Suga POV half of your lovely fic!! ;___; ♥ it is such an honour, I hope I did it justice!
> 
> This is my first time writing for Haikyuu!!, and my first time writing Suga, so... I'm a little nervous? But I can't think of a better way to have dipped my toe into this very friendly fandom than with the opportunity to remix one of Justine's works. Or maybe a more nervewracking way, now that I think about it. Too late, I've done it already T__T
> 
> find me on [tumblr](http://themorninglark.tumblr.com/) | [@kenmakotos on twitter](https://twitter.com/kenmakotos)


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